


Coffin Man

by LyricWolfe



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: And you can too!, Angst, Blood and Gore, Cause...screw beta reading, Dark, Feels and darkness, Glasses, Graphic Description, Grim Reapers, I actually should have probably rated this M, I love the Undertaker, I'm warning you, If you only read one work by me, It's lovely and bloody, Needles, No happiness whatsoever, Not Beta Read, Reapers, Scars, Shinigami, The T rating is very tentative, Undertaker feels, Very very dark, What even are these tags., Why don't they do indented paragraphs on here ugh?!, but I've written happy things, but don't cause I've got some other good things too, for only 3 easy payments of 19, jk, make it this, might give you the heebie jeebies, nevermind, read it, so...contrast?, this is not a happy one, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricWolfe/pseuds/LyricWolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahem. You wanna know how I got these scars?<br/>Ack! Nope! Can’t use that. It’s already been said.<br/>I need to think of something else to say instead.<br/>Hm… I don’t know what to say.<br/>Oh, well. I suppose we’ll stick with that.<br/>It’s not like you have a choice, really. It is what’s written up there. Then again, maybe you do. You could always pretend that it says something different. I’ll leave it up to you.<br/>It’s your brain after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffin Man

“The Ankou is the henchman of Death and he is also known as the graveyard watcher, they said that he protects the graveyard and the souls around it for some unknown reason and he collects the lost souls on his land. The last dead of the year, in each parish, becomes the Ankou of his parish for all of the following year. When there has been, in a year, more deaths than usual, one says about the Ankou:  
‘War ma fé, heman zo eun Anko drouk, (On my faith, this one is a nasty Ankou)’”

-from The Legend of Death by Anatole Le Braz

*****

They call him the Undertaker.  
No, that’s not a good enough beginning, is it? Hold on, let me try again  
They call me the Undertaker. There. That makes more sense. Why would I talk about myself in the third person? That doesn’t make any sense. But then again, what good is a world that makes sense all the time? That sounds so boring to me.  
Where was I? Oh, right. Hello there, dear reader.  
Unless you’re listening to this. Then hello there, dear listener.  
Oh, technicalities. Why must you cause me despair like this? Heh, well, we might as well move on. I’m supposed to be telling you a story here, aren’t I? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I suppose I could. 

Ahem. You wanna know how I got these scars?  
Ack! Nope! Can’t use that. It’s already been said. I need to think of something else to say instead. Hm… I don’t know what to say. Oh, well. I suppose we’ll stick with that. It’s not like you have a choice, really. It is what’s written up there. Then again, maybe you do. You could always pretend that it says something different. I’ll leave that up to you. It’s your brain after all.  
Anyway, back to the story.  
I was a Reaper once. Well, I still am. I have the eyes and the scythe still. But I am, how would I put this? Retired? But that makes me feel old, and I’m really not that old. Not by immortal being’s standards, at least. You humans would think I was very old.  
Do I seem a bit distracted? Maybe it’s because I’m not overly keen to share this story. Why, you ask? I guess I would have to tell you the story for you to find out, wouldn’t I? But who said I ever wanted to answer your questions. Maybe I’ll have you tell me a joke first. 

Or not. I could just quit stalling.  
I didn’t always have the stitches on my face, you see. Once upon a time, I was much prettier than I am now. Hm… I get the feeling that pretty wasn’t the best word to choose there. Pretty. Nevermind.  
I was the head honcho back at the Grim Reaper Dispatch Society. Well, I say ‘head honcho’, but I wasn’t necessarily the one in charge there. They just liked me. A lot. More than they should have, I would say.  
Life as an employed Reaper was nothing special, really. It was the same thing every day, day in and day out. Reap this soul, reap that soul. Write this down, turn in your paperwork. Wear your glasses, never forget them. This man is going to die. This woman is going to be killed. I hope we don’t go overtime. Reap this soul, reap that soul. Write this down. Turn in your paperwork. Wear your glasses. Never forget them. This man is going to die. This woman is going to die. I hope we don’t go overtime. Reap this soul, reap that soul. Write this down. Turn in your paperwork. Wear your glasses. Never forget them. This man is going to die. This woman is going to die. I hope we don’t go overtime. Reap this soul, reap that soul. Write this down. Turn in your paperwork. Wear your glasses. Never forget them. This man is going to die. This woman is going to die. I hope we don’t go overtime. Reap this soul, reap that soul. Write this down. Turn in your paperwork. Wear your glasses. Never forget them. This man is going to die. This woman is going to die. I hope we don’t go overtime…

Such a bore… 

I’ve always thought that humans were so much more interesting than that. Wouldn’t you think so? They have such a lack of monotony about them. Not one human is the same as another. They are all their own person in their own way. It’s so much more interesting. Infinitely more interesting than the boring job of having to reap souls every single moment of my existence without a break. Humans lead such wonderful lives, much better than mine. Much more fun.  
Was I jealous? Maybe a little.  
But humans became my little experiments. I wanted to know as much I could about them. Even if that mean ripping them open and exposing what skin would normally hide. And I was very pleased with what I had found. Such complexity on the inside, but it’s all the same there. Humans under their skin remain the same, but I couldn’t accept that. How could a creature that looked so different from other members of its species look the same when you peeled away it’s face? It didn’t make any sense. 

I remember one experiment.  
It was a young man. He had died from a shot to the heart. Point-blank. I had successfully reaped his soul and recorded my progress in the ledger. It was usually up to the elements of Mother Nature to take care of the body after death, but not today. The body was mine today.  
It was still fresh, this I knew, so the first few incisions were going to be a bit messier than I liked. Nevertheless, I continued to cut, making sure that I was not damaging the insides of my precious specimen.  
I figured out pretty quickly that the copious amounts of blood coming from the body were going to be problematic. Red dripped from the edges of the exposed middle where the flesh had been peeled back to reveal the insides. I reached for my matches, and struck several at a time. A small flame danced in the dark, musty air of my room. I carefully held the flame to the ends of the flesh, cauterizing the edge.  
The flow slowly came to a halt, but the liquid was still pooled inside the exposed middle. I slowly tilted the body away from me, letting the contents spill out onto the floor. The floor next to the other side of the table became soaked with the fluid. I sighed slowly. What a mess. 

The heart looked pretty good. I didn’t find anything very wrong with it, and I have had a lot of experience looking at a dead man’s heart. My hands were becoming stained as I dug around. I carefully examined each organ, taking every detail into account. It was very interesting to me. The way that these strange objects all somehow connected to each other to make the body work. It was so new, so different from the monotonous life that I had been living.  
Then came my favorite part.  
The eyes.  
This man’s eyes were blue, a color that I did not possess. Mine were a green sort of color. I reached for my knife and pushed up my glasses so I could see. I had to be careful. I needed to figure out how these eyes worked if I had any chance of fixing my own.  
I placed my fingernails around the eye, creating a circle around the orb. Then, slowly but surely, I pushed my hand downwards. The black nails slipped past the eye and around it. A somewhat unpleasant squelching noise filled my hair-covered ears. I slowly wrapped my fingers around the eye and carefully pulled upwards. Slowly, but surely, the orb became dislodged from its socket. The muscles around the eye suddenly began to tighten, pulling the eye back. Rigor mortis. I hissed in frustration and grabbed my scissors. Snipping the muscles in half, I freed the eye. I held the blue orb closely to my eyes, observing it carefully. My hand was stopped as the optic nerve tugged. I cut it in half.  
“Let's see if we can figure out how you work,” I whispered, a grin crossing my face. “Besides, how can I fix my own eyes if I don't understand how eyes work?”  
The man, of course, said nothing. 

*****

I growled in frustration as I sat back down at my desk. A stand up mirror, stained with a few drops of blood, showed me my face. I glared at the reflection. My green eyes were bloodshot, irritated beyond belief. This, of course, was my fault. I was the one trying to fix my eyes with nothing more than a knife and a needle.  
Reapers wear glasses. We are all terribly nearsighted. Take away our precious spectacles, and we become practically useless. We can barely do anything without our precious sight, and by happenstance our spectacles. I've always seen the metal shapes framing my eyes as a weakness, so I endeavored to fix them. I carefully figured out the inner workings of the eye. I dug into every human’s eye that I could get a hold of.  
But, I have Reaper's eyes. No human tool can fix them. And because of this, my extensive research on human eyes has gone completely to waste. I carved them open and peeled them apart for nothing.  
I sighed slowly, bringing the knife back up to my face. Carefully holding it under my eye, I carved a small line. A small drip of claret trailed down my cheek. I threw the knife across the room, screaming in anger. I didn't mean to cut there. I'm too weak to get the eye itself. The instinct of self-preservation was preventing me from touching my eyes. My brain didn’t want me to do this. It was instinct for me to miss. This was much harder than it needed to be.  
“No more of this,” I hissed to myself. I reached for a long needle, which I had set on a pedestal to be kept over a flame for the past hour. The metal is hot, but it doesn't burn me. I'm a Reaper, after all.  
I hold the tip of the needle in front of my pupil, which is dilated in fear. I look into the mirror, seeing the anxiety in my face. I notice the cut under my eye from earlier has turned into a thin, pink line. The deep scalpel cut was vanishing quickly. I worried for a moment that I would heal too fast, and my eyes would never get fixed. I exhaled slowly, breath shaking violently.  
But I decided not to care. With one fluid motion, I slipped the needle into my eye. 

A loud shriek filled the room. It took me a moment to realize that the sound was my own. The eye holding the needle was bleeding, and red was dripping down my cheek. I was crying out, loud wails of pain escaping my lips without pause.  
I frantically stood up, stumbling back from my chair, which fell to the ground in my absence. My hands hovered over my face, wanting to make contact but not being able to do so. The needle was flicking around as my eyes moved. Fear was taking over, but I had to keep calm. I had to do this. I had to finish what I came here to do. There was no way for me to finish my work if all I did was scream.  
Shaking like a leaf, I reached for the fallen chair. As I sat down, I moved my bangs back out of my face. That’s when I got a good look in the mirror, and I swore I couldn’t look away. The sight of the thin, metal rod, now rendered short since it was in my eye, made me want to scream. My hands hovered over my face, and my mouth was twisted into an ugly frown, one half painted red with blood. My mind kept telling me: get it out, get it out. You shouldn’t have a needle in your eye. Get it out. That’s not supposed to be there, but I just stared at my reflection. The wound wasn’t closing. I realized that it was because it was being blocked by a needle. This small fact was a slight glimmer of hope in the agony that I was experiencing. I barely noticed the whimpering of pain coming from my shaking lips. 

I grabbed the end of the needle and slowly began to swirl it. Pain shot through me like a bullet and I gasped. My hand moved away from the needle, the will to continue being blinded by the hurt. I stared at the mirror, watching the blood drip down my face. My whole body was shaking. I breathed slowly, mentally trying to convince myself to keep moving. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. My brain seemed to hate me for doing this. The instinct to live without pain was taking over me. My head wanted me to stop, but my heart begged me to go on.  
I needed to do this. What was stopping me, really? The fact that it stung? My head responded to this thought with a resounding yes! and I wanted to scream. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want this needle in my eye anymore. I’m fine with the crutch, I’m fine with the glasses. I will wear them. I’ll do my job, I’ll be a Reaper. I’ll stop complaining about the monotony. I’m okay. I’ll survive. I don’t want to do this. I’ll do my job, and I won’t complain. Thoughts like this ran through my head at a million miles an hour, taking over my head. 

"Really?" I heard a voice in my head say. "I don’t think so, Undertaker. You will never be happy with being a Reaper. You hate it. You hate what you are. You need to get rid of the glasses. You need to get rid of the one thing that makes you a Reaper. Because if you can live without them, if you can see without them, then you are no longer one of their dogs. You can go and do whatever you want without them barking orders at you. Isn’t this what you want? Isn’t this what you’ve been working so hard for? Isn’t this the reason why you cut open all of those dead people? And now here you are, ready to change, and you’re shying away from it because it stings."  
I cried out in anger, holding my hair out of my face with both hands. My elbows rested on the table in front of me. The metal rod in my eye obstructed my vision, and I could see it as a thick, blurry circle covering part of my sight. I was shaking in pain, and the blood from my punctured eye was beginning to pool up on the desk. I stared at the looking glass. As I looked around at the reflection, I could see the needle swinging in my eye. My heart was pounding, my optical throbbing with each beat. Pain ran down my nerves like fire. My heart begged me to go on, but my mind begged me to stop. Who do I follow? Should I let my head take over my heart? Would it be smarter to do so?  
But no, I can’t. I need to be able to see.  
I grab the needle once more. 

The swirling motion becomes more excruciating the more that I do it. But I have to find it. I have to tap that optic nerve just right, and my eyes will be perfect.  
I just keep telling myself this, because in all actuality, I have no idea what to do. I have no idea how to fix my eyes. I might go blind from this. Then, not only would I no longer be a Reaper, but a blind man begging on the street. I don’t want to fathom the thought, but it’s all that I can think about in the agony of the spinning needle.  
My fingernails graze the surface of my eye as I push the needle deeper, piercing and creating wounds of their own. I move it slowly, and I can feel it tearing from the inside. The pointed end of the metal pulls and tugs whenever I move it, making my vision go redder and redder. Tiny pricks from within that I can hear in my head like drumbeats. I can feel it pulling as it slides in and out. The slight ripping sounds I hear almost drive me insane.  
Shlick shlick, rip rip, pull pull, tug tug. My eye is soaked with blood. I watch myself move in the mirror, and I am horrified by my every motion. "How can that be me?" I ask myself. "I would never damage myself like this. That can’t be me. What’s going on? Who is the person in the mirror? I barely recognize him.  
"I barely recognize that smile."

And I am. I am smiling. A large, wide grin that has never crossed my face before. Like a madman, I am beaming at the sight of my agony. What is wrong with me?! I think in my head, but my face denotes pleasure.  
The needle taps something, and I screech as electric fire runs down my spine. My smile is gone, and I tear the needle out of my eye. I can’t take this anymore, I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to do this. I stare at the reflective glass. I am sobbing, I see. The whole right side of my face is dowsed with claret, staining my pale skin. My eye is drenched in the liquid, the original green of my glowing iris barely peeking through. Like Christmas, I think sourly.  
I bring my hand, hot and sticky with crimson, up to my face. I use my fingers to widen my eye, moving the lids out of the way. I lean down, letting the red drip out. I drain the fluid completely and come back up. I see the green, duller than before, looking back at me from the mirror. Hand shaking, I cover my other eye. The untouched eye temporarily blinded by red on my pale hand. I look up and into the distance. My vision is foggy, but I wait patiently for it to clear. I can feel the wound closing, sewing itself shut. The pain of my healing is insignificant compared to the feeling of needles in my eye.  
My vision clears, and my eyes widen at what I see.  
That’s right, what I see. I can see now. 

Glee taking over me, I grab the bloody needle and shove it into my other eye. 

*****

“Sir, where are your glasses?” I hear a voice ask me. I turn around. William T. Spears is standing behind me. I smile at him.  
“Don’t need them, Will,” I reply. He narrows his green eyes, which match mine perfectly in color. I begin to twirl my braid around my finger, watching William in my fixed eyes. He pushes up his glasses in thought.  
"Can you see?" he asked. I nodded. I watched as he swung his garden shears over his shoulder. I smirked at the pitiful version of a Death Scythe. He looked at me with a blank expression. I knew he was angry, but he was never one to show emotion on his face.  
"How did you do that?" he asked. I giggled and tapped my temple with a long nail. He grimaced at my wordless response. I would've told him, but I honestly was still frightened by the idea of me digging around in my eyes. Eyes are a Reaper's weakness, and so it was against my very nature to damage them with a needle.  
“You have abolished the need to wear your Reaper's spectacles,” I heard Will say, “which means you have stepped down from your title as a Reaper.” His voice was quiet, and held a tint of sadness. He was watching me carefully, holding tightly to his garden shears.  
“Sir, would you follow me, please?” he asked, voice tight like a noose. I smiled and nodded. We walked together down the hall.  
We reached a door to a meeting room, and he swung it open slowly. I walked into the room and sat down on one of the chairs. I crossed my legs and looked up at him, smiling. Will sighed slowly, and closed the door behind him. He reached for the lightswitch. The room slowly light up with warming lights. 

Then, suddenly, I feel a sharp pain across my face. I feel the skin over my eye split open. Then I feel tight cords wrap around my middle. I realized my coat and shirt are gone. I was exposed from the hips up, and I started to feel a familiar warmth trail down my face. But, I knew that this cut will never heal all the way. Reapers can only be truly harmed by a Death Scythe. I look up at Will, whose glasses are reflecting so I cannot see his eyes. I am bound tightly to the chair, and I feel a sinking in my stomach as I come to realize that he is hurting me on purpose.  
“Why?” I asked him, but he said nothing, holding the tip of the garden shears at the top of my face. I felt as he slowly dragged the blade downwards. The end was dipping into my skin, pulling it open. I hissed in pain, watching him with my fixed eyes, now being blinded by drips of red. I don't understand. Why is he hurting me? Did I ruin something? I didn't mean to ruin anything.  
“Don't you understand, sir?” William asked me, voice gentle. “You are the best of the best. We do so much with you here. Not having you with us anymore... the very thought scares me.”  
“So you decide to cut me up instead?” I ask, my voice quiet. He avoided my gaze.  
“You must be punished,” he said simply. He pulled his shears away. I felt the red drip down my face, and I wished the feeling wasn’t so familiar to me. William was not looking into my eyes. He avoided my gaze. Sadness was eating at me. Will was my friend. What had gotten into him. Even if I had broken a rule of some sort, how could he have it in him to hurt me like this? I just didn’t…

I felt the shears move to my throat, holding me in place so I wouldn’t move. I felt something like a warm necklace begin to form from the ends of the blade. The blood trailed over my nose and down my right cheek. My left eye was becoming more and more blinded by the liquid. I felt the cords loosen as they fell from my bare chest. I stood up slowly, watching Will carefully. He avoided my gaze.  
“Are you finished?” I asked softly, my eyes sad and gentle.  
“Yes,” William replied, stepping aside to make way to the door. “You may leave now, Undertaker.” I walked a few steps forward, but stopped as I stood next to Will. He was looking straight ahead, as if I wasn’t right next to him, smelling of my own blood. He held his garden shears up right next to him. The blade was between our heads.  
“I hate you,” I whispered, pushing the blade away. My pinky caught between the shears as I did so. I barely noticed that it had cut through, giving me a red ring to match my necklace. I walked away, picking my black coat off of the ground. 

“We will miss you, sir,” he called as I opened the door to leave.  
“That’s lying,” I growled back. “you should stop before you form a habit.”  
And with that, I closed the door. I felt the red staining my chest as it poured from my neck. My hand was dripping along with it. I couldn’t see out of my left eye, but I knew it would heal soon. I had fixed my eyes to do so, but I had scars now. Scars that I could never get rid of if I tried. I walked forward, never looking back. I could hear others around me. Reapers that whispered to each other as they saw my bleeding face and neck. But I ignored their words. They didn’t matter to me anymore. I had renounced my title as a Reaper. I was now free from them.  
When I walked through the door to enter the building, I slammed it behind me, leaving the sound of my absence loudly ringing behind me. 

 

And so, here I am.  
Are you satisfied, O Reader? Does reading of my pain make you happy? Does reading of my sorrow make you smile? What is wrong with you? Are you a monster? A monster like me?

I’m sorry.  
That was rude.  
Nevertheless, I am a monster. I made myself one. This is all my fault, and I have the scars to prove it. They remind me, every time I look into the mirror, that I am a mistake. That my demise, my undoing, is my own fault.  
They call me the Undertaker. And, I suppose, so do I.

**Author's Note:**

> Well!  
> That was HAPPY wasn't it?  
> I'm totally kidding. There was nothing happy about that. Anyway, I hope you liked it. Sorry if the graphicness was too graphic for you. I was originally going to make it a lot worse, but I decided to not be as gross as I could have been.  
> Maybe I'll write something more gory later. Who knows?  
> Anyway, tell me what you think. Please. I need to know.  
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! ♥  
> -Lyric


End file.
